One traditional method of treating a wound involves the placement of a sterile gauze over the wound area and holding the gauze in place with adhesive tape. This type of wound dressing has numerous shortcomings. The wound is not fully isolated from the environment and can exchange bacteria with the environment. The gauze can adhere to the wound area interfering with the healing process which is undesirable as well. This traditional form of bandage does not control the thermal environment of the wound and this is undesirable as well.
Although wound heaters and non-contact wound coverings are known they are not generally accepted for several reasons. Wound coverings which include a rigid enclosure forming a cavity that covers the wound are usually adhesively attached to the skin of the patient with a relatively inelastic material. This results in the inability of the wound covering to accommodate patient motion. Usually patient motion will cause the rigid wound covering to peel-off of the patient's skin. The traditional solution to this problem has been to use a more aggressive adhesive tape or the like to more firmly attach the wound covering to the skin. This solution to the problem results in an uncomfortable bandage.
The traditional wound covering does not permit close control over the temperature of the wound area. Prior art heated bandages which rely on a non-contact enclosure may use point source type heaters which result in variations in radiant heat flux depending on the location of the heater within the enclosure. Therefore there is a need for a non-contact bandage which can be used to control the environment of the wound and which may be reliably and comfortably attached to the skin.